When Voltaire was sent into
exile in 1727, he exploited his enforced absence from France as
an opportunity to visit England. During his stay, he
studied the language, read widely, sought out the personal
acquaintance of a host of English luminaries in letters and the
sciences, and studied English institutions as a sympathetic
outsider. He then published a series of short essays, first
in English, under the title Letters concerning the English
Nation (1733), and then in French under the title Lettres
philosophiques [or Philosophical Letters] (in
1734). The reaction in France was highly mixed. In
fact, the work was both wildly hailed and formally banned.

Many French political conservatives and devout
Catholics were scandalized at his admiration for things English
that Voltaire had pointedly characterized as different from the
way things were done in France. There was lots to seize
upon. Voltaire had gone out of his way to praise the
English system of government (constitutional government in which
Parliament held the upper hand), the English stress on free trade
( its general policy of laissez faire) and the thriving
commerce that seemed to be its result (as distinct from the
determinedly mercantilist policy of France, inherited from the
reign of Louis XIV), the general practice of religious toleration
(he offered essays on the Church of England, on Presbyterians, on
Quakers), and the willingness of the English upper classes to
experiment with new ways when empirical evidence suggested that
departure from immemorial tradition might be beneficial (this in
an essay on the willingness of the English educated classes to
have themselves and their children vaccinated against smallpox,
in accordance with the discoveries of William Jenner). The
negative reaction, in other words, was based not merely on
national chauvinism ("patriotism") but on an accurate
inference that Voltaire was suggesting, subversively, that France
was too politically and culturally repressive, and that this was
not just different but foolish, and contrary to the prosperity of
the nation.

As part of this collection, Voltaire also
provided sketches of the achievements of great Englishmen of the
recent past: modern masters. Prominent among these
were Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. These essays are worth
a look for the light they throw on Voltaire's enthusiasm for the
possibilities opened up by bold breaks with Tradition in the name
of Natural Reason. Voltaire's choice of heroes is
characteristic of the Enlightenment in general. The same
features of the Philosophical Letters that made the work
anathema to the politically and religiously conservative made it
a cause of celebration among hundreds of French readers, who
eagerly acquired copies on the black market.

In reading Voltaire's essay on Bacon, be
alert for what, precisely, Voltaire admires in the author of
the Novum Organum. How does this connect with
the presuppositions behind the conclusion of Candide,
where we are urged to "tend our own garden"?

Chancellor Bacon

It is not long since the ridiculous and threadbare question
was agitated in a celebrated assembly; who was the greatest man,
Caesar or Alexander, Tamerlane or Cromwell? Somebody said
that it must undoubtedly be Sir Isaac Newton. This man was
certainly in the right; for if true greatness consists in having
received from heaven the advantage of a superior genius, with the
talent of applying it for the interest of the possessor and of
mankind, a man like Newton - and such a one is hardly to be
met with in ten centuries - is surely by much the greatest;
and those statesmen and conquerors which no age has ever been
without, are commonly but so many illustrious villains. It
is the man who sways our minds by the prevalence of reason and
the native force of truth, not they who reduce mankind to a state
of slavery by brutish force and downright violence; the man who
by the vigor of his mind, is able to penetrate into the hidden
secrets of nature, and whose capacious soul can contain the vast
frame of the universe, not those who lay nature waste, and
desolate the face of the earth, that claims our reverence and
admiration.

Therefore, as you are desirous to be informed of the great men
that England has produced, I shall begin with the Bacons, the
Lockes, and the Newtons. The generals and ministers will
come after them in their turn.

I must begin with the celebrated baron Verulam, known to the
rest of Europe by the name of Bacon, who was the son of a certain
keeper of the seals, and was for a considerable time chancellor
under James I. Notwithstanding the intrigues and bustle of
a court, and the occupations incident to his office, which would
have required his whole attention, he found means to become a
great philosopher, a good historian, and an elegant writer; and
what is yet more wonderful is that he lived in an age where the
art of writing was totally unknown, and where sound philosophy
was still less so. This personage, as is the way among
mankind, was more valued after his death than while he
lived. His enemies were courtiers residing at London, while
his admirers consisted wholly of foreigners. When Marquis
d'Effiat brought Princess Mary, daughter of Henry the Great, over
to be married to King Charles, this minister paid Bacon a visit,
who being then confined to a sick bed, received him with close
curtains. "You are like the angels," said
d'Effiat to him; "we hear much talk of them, and while
everybody thinks them superior to men, we are never favored with
a sight of them."

You have been told in what manner Bacon was accused of a crime
which is very far from being the sin of a philosopher; of being
corrupted by pecuniary gifts; and how he was sentenced by the
house of peers to pay a fine of about four hundred thousand
livres of our money, besides losing his office of chancellor, and
being degraded from the rank and dignity of a peer. At
present the English revere his memory to such a degree that only
with great difficulty can one imagine him to have been in the
least guilty. Should you ask me what I think of it, I will
make use of a saying I heard from Lord Bolingbroke. They
happened to be talking of the avarice with which the duke of
Marlborough had been taxed, and quoted several instances of it,
for the truth of which they appealed to Lord Bolingbroke, who, as
being of a contrary party, might, perhaps, without any trespass
against the laws of decorum, freely say what he thought.
"He was," said he, "so great a man that I do not
recollect whether he had any faults or not." I shall,
therefore, confine myself to those qualities which have acquired
Chancellor Bacon the esteem of all Europe.

The most singular, as well as the most excellent, of all his
works, is that which is now the least read, and which is at the
same time the most useful; I mean his "Novum Scientiarum
Organum." This is the scaffold by means of which
the edifice of the new philosophy has been reared; so that when
the building was completed, the scaffold was no longer of any
use. Chancellor Bacon was still unacquainted with nature,
but he perfectly knew, and pointed out extraordinarily well, all
the paths which lead to her recesses. He had very early
despised what those square-capped fools teach in those dungeons
called Colleges, under the name of philosophy, and did everything
in his power that those bodies, instituted for the cultivation
and perfection of the human understanding, might cease any longer
to mar it, by their "quiddities," their "horrors
of a vacuum," their "substantial forms," with the
rest of that jargon which ignorance and a nonsensical jumble of
religion had consecrated.

This great man is the father of experimental philosophy.
It is true, wonderful discoveries had been made even before his
time; the mariner's compass, the art of printing, that of
engraving, the art of painting in oil, that of making glass, with
the remarkably advantageous invention of restoring in some
measure sight to the blind; that is, to old men, by means of
spectacles; the secret of making gunpowder had, also, been
discovered. They had gone in search of, discovered, and
conquered a new world in another hemisphere. Who would not
have thought that these sublime discoveries had been made by the
greatest philosophers, and in times much more enlightened than
ours? By no means; for all these astonishing revolutions
happened in the ages of scholastic barbarity. Chance alone
has brought forth almost all these inventions; it is even
pretended that chance has had a great share in the discovery of
America; at least, it has been believed that Christopher Columbus
undertook this voyage on the faith of a captain of a ship who had
been cast by a storm on one of the Caribbee islands. Be
this as it will, men had learned to penetrate to the utmost
limits of the habitable globe, and to destroy the most
impregnable cities with an artificial thunder, much more terrible
than the real; but they were still ignorant of the circulation of
the blood, the weight and pressure of the air, the laws of
motion, the doctrine of light and color, the number of the
planets in our system, etc. And a man that was capable to
maintain a thesis on the "Categories of Aristotle," the
universale a parte rei, such-like nonsense, was considered as
a prodigy.

The most wonderful and useful inventions are by no means those
which do most honor to the human mind. And it is to a
certain mechanical instinct, which exists in almost every man,
that we owe far the greater part of the arts, and in no manner
whatever to philosophy. The discovery of fire, the arts of
making bread, of melting and working metals, of building houses,
the invention of the shuttle, are infinitely more useful than
printing and the compass; notwithstanding, all these were
invented by men who were still in a state of barbarity.
What astonishing things have the Greeks and Romans since done in
mechanics? Yet men believed, in their time, that the
heavens were of crystal, and the stars were so many small lamps,
that sometimes fell into the sea; and one of their greatest
philosophers, after many researches, had at length discovered
that the stars were so many pebbles, that had flown off like
sparks from the earth.

In a word, there was not a man who had any idea of
experimental philosophy before Chancellor Bacon; and of an
infinity of experiments which have been made since his time,
there is hardly a single one which has not been pointed out in
his book. He had even made a good number of them
himself. He constructed several pneumatic machines, by
which he discovered the elasticity of the air; he had long
brooded over the discovery of its weight, and was even at times
very near to catching it, when it was laid hold of by Torricelli. A short time after,
experimental physics began to be cultivated in almost all parts
of Europe. This was a hidden treasure, of which Bacon had
some glimmerings, and which all the philosophers whom his
promises had encouraged made their utmost efforts to lay
open. We see in his book mention made in express terms of
that new attraction of which Newton passes for the
inventor. "We must inquire," said Bacon,
"whether there be not a certain magnetic force, which
operates reciprocally between the earth and other heavy bodies,
between the moon and the ocean, between the planets,
etc." In another place he says: "Either
heavy bodies are impelled toward the centre of the earth, or they
are mutually attracted by it; in this latter case it is evident
that the nearer falling bodies approach the earth, the more
forcibly are they attracted by it. We must try,"
continues he, "whether the same pendulum clock goes faster
on the top of a mountain, or at the bottom of a mine. If
the force of the weight diminishes on the mountain, and increases
in the mine, it is probably the earth has a real attracting
quality."

This precursor in philosophy was also an elegant writer, a
historian, and a wit. His moral essays are in high
estimation, though they seem rather calculated to instruct than
to please; and as they are neither a satire on human nature, like
the maxims of Rochefoucauld, nor a school of skepticism, like
Montaigne; they are not so much read as these two ingenious
books. His life of Henry VII. passed for a masterpiece; but
how is it possible some people should have been idle enough to
compare so small a work with the history of our illustrious M. de Thou? Speaking of that famous
impostor Perkin, son of a Jew convert, who assumed so boldly the
name of Richard IV., king of England, being encouraged by the
duchess of Burgundy, and who disputed the crown with Henry VII.,
he expresses himself in these terms: "About this time
King Henry was beset with evil spirits, by the witchcraft of the
duchess of Burgundy, who conjured up from hell the ghost of
Edward IV., in order to torment King Henry. When the
duchess of Burgundy had instructed Perkin, she began to consider
with herself in what region of the heavens she should make this
comet shine, and resolved immediately that it should make its
appearance in the horizon of Ireland." I think our
sage de Thou seldom gives in to this gallimaufry, which used
formerly to pass for the sublime, but which at present is known
by its proper title, "bombast."

The text is taken from The Works of Voltaire: A
Contemporary Version (New York: Dingwall-Rock, Ltd.,
1927), Vol. XIX, Part II, pp. 27-33. [As far
as I can tell, the translations are by William F. Fleming, though
many are revisions of the translation done in the 18th Century by
Tobias Smollett. The notes, including the introduction, are
mine.]

Notes

Torricelli:
Evangelista Torricelli (1608-47) served Galileo as his secretary
during the last year of Galileo's life. Like Galileo
himself (who had begun his career in medicine), Torricelli was
both physician and physicist. Among his inventions is the
barometer, which exploits a column of mercury in a glass tube to
measure variations in air pressure due to altitude or changes in
weather conditions. (The barometer in fact was for a long
time known as the "Torricelli tube.") Return.

the history of our illustrious M.
de Thou: Jacques Auguste de Thou
(1553-1617) was active in the entourage of Henry IV (1553-1610,
the religiously tolerant King of France from 1589 until his
assassination by Ravaillac, a Catholic fanatic). De Thou
wrote the voluminous History of His Own Times. (The
book's early volumes appeared in 1604-08, in Latin, and a
complete edition appeared in Geneva in 1620 - at about the
time Bacon was publishing his Novum Organum. De
Thou's treatment of the religious wars of the 16th Century was
highly critical of the Catholic League - a feature that
endeared it to Voltaire precisely as it raised hackles in French
Catholic circles. Return.